Improving conversion
Conversion is the term used to describe turning visitors into customers.
This might mean a purchase of a product, new members for a soccer club, readers of a blog, and so on.
While there are many tools to assist in optimising your page for the search engines (see Search Engine Optimisation) up to now the only way to improve conversion was by trying different layouts, designs, etc. Changing a page often meant jeopardising your search engine ranking.
Now Google have introduced a tool to assist with improving conversions that will not change your ranking.
The Website Optimizer enables you to experiment with different layout, content, etc. without losing your valuable Google ranking
The tool tracks the conversion rate of each experiment providing insight into what your customers really like to see.
The Basics
Make it easy to buy - no complicated procedures, irrelevant (demographic) questions.
Clean orderly appearance - a site design that matches audience expectations
Store uniqueness - be memorable
Cross merchandising - sell one thing and suggest other products that might be of interest
Gather opt-in email addresses - great for following up a sale and generating repeat business
Extras
Speaking characters - e.g. Sitepal
Click-to-call, where a potential buyer is connected to a call-centrwe to close the deal e.g. www.buttontel.com
Videos